Friday, January 16, 2015

Scan the “positions vacant” advertisements from the last
year and it is clear that an interesting new type of job is emerging in
libraries – combining directorship of a university press with senior
responsibilities for other scholarly communication activity on campus. Such
titles include Executive Director of Temple University Press and the Library
Officer for Scholarly Communication, Director of Purdue University Press and
Head of Scholarly Publishing Services (Purdue Libraries), Director of Indiana
University Press and Digital Publishing, and Director of University of Michigan
Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing. In an extreme example
(not from the jobs list) the University Librarian at Oregon State University
has for a number of years also been Director of Oregon State University Press.

What these new positions exemplify is a movement not only
toward more university presses reporting to libraries (from 14 AAUP members in
2009 to 21 in 2014), but also a trend toward increasing integration of the two
entities. Physical collocation of staff with both library and press
backgrounds, joint strategic planning exercises, and shared support
infrastructure are other characteristics of the most integrated press/library
collaborations. Even where the heads of university presses exploring these
opportunities for integration do not hold the sort of joint titles listed above
(as at Northwestern, North Texas, Georgia, and Arizona for example) their roles
are changing as they assume greater responsibilities in library administration.

Such integration presents great opportunities (as described
elsewhere in this issue of Against the
Grain), but it also creates challenges for the leaders of these merged
entities – exemplars of the new role of “pubrarian” so named by John Unsworth
(now occupying the equally merged role of Vice Provost, University Librarian,
and CIO at Brandeis University). Having occupied two of the positions above
over the last few years, first at Purdue University and now at the University
of Michigan, three particular areas of challenge have emerged for me.

Challenge 1: Articulating the value of publishing to library colleagues

You must know the scene, whether it’s the red carpet on the
night of the Academy Awards or Market Street in the Palmetto City as dusk
falls. An apparently mismatched couple walks by, one short one tall, one ugly
one beautiful, one nicely dressed one a mess, and we wonder . . . “What’s (s)he
getting out of that relationship?”

As both a university press director and a member of the
library leadership team, I often sense that my

colleagues in libraries may be
having the same question about press/library collaborations. It is pretty
obvious to them what university presses are getting out of the relationship
because the benefits are so tangible. The more integrated presses benefit from
greater financial security, nicer space, access to better technology, and higher
profiles in their parent institutions. But what benefits does a close
collaboration with a university press bring to the library, financially at
least usually the better endowed party in the match?

In addressing this question, it helps to examine the ways in
which press publishers can help academic librarians collaborate in, firstly,
the research and, secondly, the teaching activities of disciplinary faculty.

On the research side, having a university press “in house” promises
a library enriched opportunities to engage with, and understand, the needs of
faculty members as authors, as well as users of information. We all know that there
are real asymmetries in the ways that the same scholars behave when they are
creators rather than consumers. For example, an advocate for the value of
reusable open data may become peculiarly cagey when it comes to sharing her own
research findings. University presses understand the care and feeding of
authors, contributing perspectives and skills that can provide an advantage to
libraries that identify the similarities between imbedded subject liaisons and
acquisitions editors early, and are willing to explore them further. Publishers
also appreciate the systems of reward and prestige that motivate authors, and
if given the opportunity to do so can usefully inform the design of services
and systems, such as data repositories or author identification schema, that
rely on enthusiastic academic opt in rather than grudging conformity to really
take off.

On the learning and teaching side, university presses offer
libraries new opportunities for demonstrating relevance with administrations
that are increasingly focused on creating an undergraduate student experience
that is both more engaging and affordable. Most well-publicized are several
initiatives to create open or inexpensive textbooks based on library/press
collaboration, although the particular conventions of that complex type of
publishing make success elusive.

Textbook authors still generally expect a
level of silver-platter service and gourmet financial incentive that is difficult
to deliver economically. Emerging opportunities to engage students in the
publishing process, as authors and editors, seem more promising. As our parent
institutions move to more engaged, experiential styles of teaching and
learning, the press in the library offers the opportunity for students to not
only research a real-world topic but also publish about it, whether in an
undergraduate research journal or edited book. That is a rich way to
incentivize student engagement, combines several high impact learning
practices, and offers a tangible outcome from the experience for them to use in
graduate school and job interviews. By working together to leverage publishing
as pedagogy, presses and libraries may also help educate the next generation of
scholars in more progressive attitudes to scholarly communication – a worthwhile
long-term play in changing reactionary academic cultures that will benefit us
all.

Challenge 2: Shaping the merged publishing program

University presses without the scale of the multinationals
are often advised to focus their attentions on a few types of publication in a
select number of disciplines rather than trying to be generalists. Such
targeted strategies allow presses to maximize the use of their limited
resources. A press publishing in a few subject areas can send acquisitions
editors to almost all the relevant conferences, can reuse mailing lists for
almost every book produced, and can adopt efficient, template-driven approaches
to design and production since most products geared for a particular discipline
are similar to each other. Oriented toward a manageable number of areas of
study, the editors will generally have a clear idea of what manuscripts to
pursue and what topics to commission in. The processes of selection that are
essential to university press publishing provide an additional filter, while
the need to recover revenue from sales imposes the discipline of the market on
the whole process.

Broaden the mission to require relevance to the parent
institution as well as key disciplines, and the question of what to prioritize
becomes more complex. A publishing director challenged to provide services to
the entire campus community may initially feel flush with opportunities to
publish, especially if situated in a large comprehensive university. But facing
such choice can feel like drinking from the fire hose, with the risks of ending
up flailing in a large pool of freezing water all too real. Where does one even
start in building a publishing program that is relevant across a large research
university as well as trans-institutionally valuable to a few key disciplines?

The reality, of course, is that most potential projects suggested
by institutional stakeholders are unrealistic in terms of the types of capacity
needed to accomplish them well. The skills and resources needed to launch a major
scientific journal, for example, are different from those used to create
excellent books. Also, while technology has leveled the playing field to a
certain extent, the design and marketing of a major introductory textbook
requires an infrastructure and web of relationships that takes years to
develop. This is why most library publishers (working either with or without a
university press partner) currently focus on the production of niche open
access journals, conference proceedings, technical reports, and upper-level
course companions. In these areas they can meet important areas of faculty and
student needs which may have dropped through the cracks, without having to
engage in unwinnable competition with established and better funded specialist publishers
outside the institution.

And, while the university might boast comprehensive
coverage, it is usually fairly clear internally where the areas of
institutional pride and attention lie. Those are also often the places where
there is the most money available to support publication, relieving the library
of sole financial responsibility for open access publishing strategies. Even if
initially not apparent, these sweet spots can be identified through trial and
error. As products appear and gain less or more recognition, the broad spray of
solutions gradually narrows to a more focused and powerful stream. And
opportunities may emerge for working up the value chain from areas where trust
has been achieved in servicing informal needs to create more formal, university
press, products. Achieving disciplinary and institutional alignment are not
necessarily contradictory goals.

Most university presses rely on well-established
credentialing processes to build their brands as book publishers: First, a
promising manuscript is identified by an acquisitions or series editor and
developed into a product that can be reviewed. Second, paid reviewers provide
detailed reports. Third, an editorial board discusses and decides whether to
pursue the project or not (and after how much further author revision). Fourth,
a copyeditor works through the manuscript looking for errors of consistency and
fact and the book is designed in a way that maximizes the look of authority.
Fifth, the book is promoted to external reviewers so that other expert opinions
confirm its excellence. These processes are immensely time and resource intensive,
and the end product represents an extreme of formality and elegance; top hat,
tails, shined shoes, and crisp white shirt.

For someone from a university press tradition, whose
publishing focus has usually been on producing top end books, there is
something very freeing in being able to operate in a campus environment where
not every project needs such formal treatment. If visualized as a spectrum from
informal to formal, the formal book (or journal) occupies a narrow space at the
right-hand end of the continuum. To its left lie the many other types of
publishing and dissemination needs that a campus community may have. There may
be the proceedings of a symposium, for example, with papers already selected by
the organizing committee. This needs moderate clean-up and speedy dissemination
rather than a formal review process, laborious quality assurance, and embargo
until the next publishing season. Sometimes taking too much care over sartorial
elegance prevents the work needed to fit the purpose getting done.

Pursuing projects characterized by a range of formality
presents a risk for a publisher whose responsibilities still include the
university press imprint. How does one avoid undermining the hard-earned
university press brand through association with lighter-weight publishing
products? How might the publication of student scholarship affect the
willingness of their professors to be published by the same organization? How
can titles that have undergone careful peer review be distinguished from those
that have been selected through less formal processes?

Reserving the university press ISBN prefix and colophon for
traditional, formal books and distinguishing the appearance of non-press both
physically and online contributes to preserving the distinction. A faculty
governance mechanism separate from the university press’s editorial board helps
preserve a degree of oversight for publications that are still going to be
associated with the university, but avoids confusion. Using different
production and distribution workflows can relieve staff concerns about pressure
of work as well as maintaining the separation. All these are strategies for
ring fencing the university press brand, and many are already familiar to
university presses that publish regional or trade books. They don’t remove all
the possibilities for confusion, but they reduce them.

Despite the importance of protecting the brand, constant
attention must be paid to the risk of keeping it too separate and reducing the
opportunities for innovation and efficiency that the mixing of different types
of publishing can bring. One thinks particular of opportunities to more
economically publish the revised dissertations which may start a scholar’s
academic progression, in a way that is informed by streamlined journal
workflows. And the dangers of fossilizing the “university press” brand so that
it remains associated with print books and their electronic facsimiles rather
than becoming the home of innovative digital scholarship that an increasing
number of scholars are searching for.

Managing two identities

The word “pubrarian” may conjure up images of OPACs in an
English bar rather than a merger of two great information professions. And
traveling with two different business cards, one for the university press and
another for the library, can make for a fat wallet. However, as libraries move
to engage with the inputs as well as outputs of scholarship, and as publishers
migrate from processing content to also providing the tools through which is it
created, our joint capacity to serve the needs of scholars at all stages of
their professional lives grow exponentially. The new pubrarians, whether they
arrive in their roles through press/library collaboration or the organic growth
of library publishing, may be at the forefront of creating such solutions. And
that’s an opportunity worth minting a new word for.

Note: This article was published in the December 2014 / January 2015 edition of Against the Grain.

About Me

I am Director of University of Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing at University of Michigan Library. Until June 2014 I was Director of Purdue University Press. Previously, until August 2009, I was Director of Publications at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
My degree from Cambridge University is in Archaeology and Anthropology and I continued to do fieldwork until 2010, most recently as a co-director of the Shala Valley Project in Northern Albania. I edited, with Michael L. Galaty of Millsaps College, Archaeology under Dictatorship, published by Springer in 2004.
As a member of the Board of Directors of both the Society for Scholarly Publishing and the Association of American University Presses, I am heavily involved with wider issues of scholarly communication. I also chair and speak at a number of seminars on scholarly communication issues.

A bit of a disclaimer

While I hope that nothing I write here offends anybody, I should probably assert that the views presented here are my own and not those of my employer, Purdue University, or any other organizations or nice bunches of people I am lucky enough to be associated with.